Progenitor - Michael Jan Friedman [47]
Chapter Fourteen
COMMANDER WU HAD HER HELM OFFICER drop the Stargazer out of warp near the center of the gargantuan Oneo Madrin system, at a point more or less equidistant from its twin stars.
It was a tricky maneuver, considering the complex balance of planets and gravity wells in the system.
However, Idun pulled it off without any apparent difficulty.
“Proceed at half impulse,” said the second officer.
“Half impulse,” Idun confirmed.
Wu advanced toward the viewscreen, which showed her a substantial section of the slender, golden accretion bridge that linked the system’s two young suns. One sun was substantially bigger than the other, which was why it was able to steal a stream of charged particles from its neighbor’s photosphere.
Not surprisingly, there was no sign of the Belladonna. But then, the research vessel was less than a hundred meters in length. Trying to pick her out visually against the vast backdrop of a binary star system made finding a needle in a haystack seem ridiculously easy by comparison.
Fortunately, the ship’s sensors weren’t restricted to the visible spectrum. They also included wideband electromagnetic scanners, virtual neutrino spectrometers, and a host of other devices.
It was the nonvisual array that Wu was relying on to pick out the Belladonna. She glanced at Gerda, who had primary responsibility for sensor operations.
“Got them?” she asked.
The navigator frowned as she worked at her console. “Not yet,” she was forced to report.
Wu was surprised. Turning back to the image on the viewscreen, she wondered what the problem was. The Belladonna’s captain had sent out a high-priority distress call. He wouldn’t have resorted to that option if his ship had been in any shape to leave Oneo Madrin.
According to that logic, the research ship should still have been here, and Gerda’s sensors should have identified it in a matter of moments. But they hadn’t done that.
Wu’s mind raced, going through the possibilities. None of them was very promising—and the ones that involved hostile intervention were the least promising of all.
She could think of half a dozen species in this part of space that might have been tempted to attack the Belladonna—among them the Enniac, the Azhuridai and the Topoli. It was unlikely that any of them would have done so for fear of the repercussions, but one never knew.
Fortunately, there was a way to see if the research vessel might have met with foul play. “Scan for ion trails,” she told Gerda.
The navigator looked up at her. “You think they were attacked?”
Wu shrugged. “Let’s find out.”
It didn’t take long. In a matter of seconds, Gerda had called up a graphic identifying ion concentrations in the area.
As it happened, there was only one discernible trail. That pretty much ruled out the possibility of an assault. But the exercise was a valuable one nevertheless, because it showed them the route the Belladonna had taken through the system.
And in the process, it gave them a pretty clear picture of where she had gone—a picture that, as it sank in, turned out to be as disheartening as it was unexpected.
Gerda muttered something harsh in the Klingon tongue. Wu didn’t speak a word of Klingon, but she had no trouble understanding the gist of the navigator’s remark.
“They’re in the accretion bridge,” Idun said for the benefit of anyone who hadn’t figured it out.
Wu nodded. “It seems that way, all right.”
She considered the conditions the Belladonna would be facing, ticking them off one by one in her mind. High levels of radiation. Powerful magnetic fields. Near-solar temperatures, mitigated only by the scarcity of material in which thermal energy could be stored. No one could survive in that environment for long.
“We’ve got to get her out of there,” she said.
Of course, it might already have been too late. If the Belladonna’s shields had been compromised even a little . . .
Nonetheless, they had to try.
The second officer turned to Gerda. “Can you identify them?”
The navigator shook her head. She was rotating sensor modalities, one after